


Love versus Duty

by matrixrefugee



Category: Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: The Countess confronts Titus on his duty to the house of Groan





	Love versus Duty

The young earl had reached his seventeenth summer and still he shirked his duty to the Law at every chance that he could find. According to the Ritual, the time had come for him to consider a consort, though the new Master of the Ritual claimed that there were provisions that said otherwise. After all, the previous Earl, Titus's father Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy sixth Earl, had slid down the wrong side of forty by the time he finally found a proper consort. But Titus was not Sepulchrave: the seventy seventh Earl was far more willful and disobedient, not one to surrender willingly to wear the copper colored cloak of his rank, and to carry out the rounds of the Ritual that ordered his life and the life of the castle, quite unlike his father who had bowed to them and been bent and crushed by them.

The Countess decided that the time had come to broach the subject to her son, during their once a week ride out into the forest, she on her black mare, Titus on a young, white stallion. She had them pause in a clearing upon a hill which overlooked the North Wing, where the shadow of the Tower of Flints could fall over them like a cloak.

"You know that is yours," Gertrude said, pointing out the castle to him, her riding crop serving as a pointer, though for all her firmness, the boy still turned away from the pile of stones, his smoke colored eyes scanning the trees about them as if he sought out something that might be lurking in the branches. "Someday it will belong to another."

He turned toward her. "Then let them have it," Titus retorted, fairly spitting the words.

"I mean that one day your heir will have all this," she said. "You are young, Titus, and though you fight against your duty, the blood of the house of Groan still flows within your veins. A consort is all that you need in order to see that that blood continues to be transmitted."

"And saddle my child with a burden that I cannot bear? Why should I inflict on my son a fate which I do not want for myself?" Titus retorted. He turned to the Countess, his violet eyes now focusing on her, no longer looking to the trees about them. "And who would I choose as my consort in this place full of old men and old women? a scullery maid? Perhaps my own sister Fuschia?" he asked, in disgust.

"We will find you a consort," Gertrude said. "You merely need submit to the rite of marriage and the rites of the official nights."

He snarled in annoyance and disgust. "You will find me a consort," he said, fairly spitting the words. "Would you order me as to whom I am to love, and when I am to embrace her? Would you order even when I am to plant a seed in my wife's body?"

Gertrude narrowed her pebble green eyes at her son. "There is one, is there not? Is that why you've been watching the trees all the time that we have been speaking?" she asked. "Who is it? The Wild Girl who dances through the trees like a leaf? She is not of the castle, and not of the Dwellers either. She is as I was, and I would not have you do as your father and I."

He looked up at his mother: he had wondered why she seemed not of the castle, why she seemed more at ease among birds and cats and other creatures, and yet she had been so wrapped up in the Ritual. "You were a Wild Thing?"

"No, not like she is," Gertrude replied, too quickly. "But yet, I was not of the Castle. We shall find someone for you, but not someone out of the forest. Not something as wild as she."

"You would have me choose who I am to love?" he said, tiredly. "Love is not a matter of choosing, it is a matter of being chosen, by love itself."

"This is not a matter of love, but of duty: duty to the castle and duty to your line," Gertrude said.

"Then I will have no part in it: I will not take a wife unless I have chosen her out of love," he said. And putting spurs to his horse, he rode away into the depths of the forest before she could object and imprison him with more words.

He would return, she knew, he would return to the castle and submit as he always did, sullenly but submitting nonetheless. And perhaps, in time, he would submit to choosing a proper consort. Before the stench that insinuated through the castle poisoned its air entirely.


End file.
